May '03 House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski

i loved the book but got really confused by some of it. the end of johnny's notes, the baby and the mother. totally didnt understand it.

i did love though how navidson (at the end of his last journey) went silent and then the blue floating light appeared. i immdiately remmeberred johnny's dream about how the people jumped in the well and if they lived a complete life the blue light would come.

i was a bit confused on how i should interpret the whole thing of johnny finding the House of leaves book and seeing his name on it etc.

also did anyoen else notice. that on the inside flap of the book (with all the the rulers and bllod and etc) picture, there is a little card that talks of how navidson wants to kill his children. how chad will run for hte door but the creature will slice him a hew and how karen will trap daisy 9or whatever her name is). any thoughts on it>? any significance?

I got this book form my Grandad. He thought it was boring and pretentious so naturally he passed it on to me. I thought it was great and that Truant-o was such a funny character. I also found the whole thing pretty unnerving. ADDITIONALLY in Buffy season seven the new high school has HoL qualities...copytwats.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by XChuck [/i]
[B]Wait, Jared Leto was in that too??? He was in American Pshyco also, and I had no idea the first two times I saw it.

And that's cool, the reference I mean. [/B][/QUOTE]

Oh God. I hate Jared Leto to the max.

Wow. I finally read "House of Leaves," (second attempt) and yearning to discuss it, I searched the forum here. Surprisingly, this is the best thread I've found and it is more of an appreciation than a discussion. I would jump over to the Houseofleaves.com board, which is a wealth of knowledge in and of itself, but as it has been noted a lot of those guys are pricks.

The book itself is open to endless interpretations, which I love. In that way it reminds me of films like David Lynch's "Lost Highway," and "Mulholland Drive." I guess one of the main debates would be over authorship of the manuscript and the releationships between and/or identities of Zampano, Johnny and Pelafina. I think deciding where you stand on those issues is the starting point to developing your own ideas about the book's mysteries.

So, in an attempt to jump start this discussion and give it some focus, what do you think? Those of you who are big fans of this book should have some theories on this.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by knoxville [/i]
[B]also did anyoen else notice. that on the inside flap of the book (with all the the rulers and bllod and etc) picture, there is a little card that talks of how navidson wants to kill his children. how chad will run for hte door but the creature will slice him a hew and how karen will trap daisy 9or whatever her name is). any thoughts on it>? any significance? [/B][/QUOTE]

Actually, I think this had to be written by either Zampano or Johnny. If you remember, in the intro to the book we are told that the manuscript is about a documentary film that doesn't exist. So whoever wrote the manuscript must have made the whole thing up (or did they?) So, if you feel Zampano is the author of the whole thing, this note is his musings on where he should take the story. However, I don't have the book in front of me right now, but if I remember correctly it looks like that text is typed in the same font Johnny uses for his footnotes. So that could mean that either Johnny is contemplating changing the story Zampano wrote, or that Johnny is the author of the whole thing and made Zampano (or at least some of his story) up.

I know this thread has been dead a while, so I hope someone gets to read this.

Yay this came back!
OK!
WTF is
[QUOTE][SIZE=20].[/SIZE]
Ygg
d
r
a
s
i
l

What miracle is this? This giant tree.
It stands ten thousand feet high
But doesn't reach the ground. Still it stands.
Its roots must hold the sky
[SIZE=20]O[/SIZE] [/QUOTE]
Its on the book's last page.
I dont get it.

Help please.

Yggdrasil is the "Tree of Life" in Norse mythology.

There is a great thread on the House of Leaves message board that really gets into this.

[url]http://www.houseofleaves.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=000074[/url]

The tree itself is made of Ash (Ash Tree Lane) and the god Odin hung himself on it in an attempt to gain wisdom, losing an eye in the process (just like Navidson.) I could type more, but I would just be regurgitating what I read in the above thread.

That is what I love about House of Leaves. You can tell Danielewski really knows his literature, because he references everything from the bible to mythology to the classics to all sorts of poetry. It pays to research the works referenced in the footnotes because they really do add so much depth to the story and give you a real appreciation for how much work went into this novel. Just the last page alone can prompt endless discussion.

I think this thread should be renamed:

"The soon to be 60+ replies if we are lucky because hardly anyone posts in the bookclub forum because everyone is too busy yucking it up in the general forum (good times, man, good times) where there have already been threads on this subject that never really went anywhere but I'm still holding out hope because as many jerks as there are on this board I would still rather discuss this here than on houseofleaves.com because that board is a veritable jerkapalooza where they don't actually discuss but just point to old threads because there is nothing new under the sun and they have said all there is to say HOUSE OF LEAVES thread."

*Sound of crickets chirping.

Questions:

Was Zampano blind? I think there were suggestions that he migh tnot have been?

What was the significance of the "growling" and the minotaur parts being crossed out?

If Truant was afraid of the dark, why would he cover his windows?

I found it in a used bookstore and bought it for a friend cause I couldn't figure out how to read it. After he read I finally did and I am still confused about a lot of it. I should prolly read it again. There's just so much to it I missed a lot of details I think.

[QUOTE=Ozymandias]And Truant's footnotes were BOOOOOOOOOOORING. The book should've been seen wholly through Zampano, not Truant's uninteresting life (though the Whalestoe Letters section was magnificent).[/QUOTE]

I totally agree with the Truant footnotes. At first I was into them, especially into the intro. I sat and read the intro at the bookstore and that's why I decided to buy the book. I think that towards the beginning the Truant footnotes were good, but then they just kind of crapped out. Maybe because the House storyline was so much more interesting. Perhaps the author was purposely using that structure to purposely slow things down to a manageable pace.
It's funny that you mention the Whalestone section because I found that to be painful. There were great moments in it, but it just went on too long.
An interesting note: the author released another book called The Whalestone Letters which is, I guess, a longer version of that section set up as a stand-alone. Anyone read it?

I read something somewhere along the lines of:

Pages of a book are often called leaves, and the book itself, with the page layout and the pages peeking past the cover on one paperback edition - suggesting the book is bigger on the inside than the outside - brings me to the conclusion that the book itself is a [COLOR=Blue]House[/COLOR] of Leaves.